


so in love with the wrong world

by basurahan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basurahan/pseuds/basurahan
Summary: John Watson's hands end two hundred lives in Afghanistan, and Sebastian Moran's hands save John Watson.
Relationships: Jim Moriarty/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Sebastian Moran
Kudos: 37
Collections: Sherlock BBC Kink Meme





	so in love with the wrong world

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/9640.html?thread=47356840#t47356840) on the SBBC kink meme, written 2011 June. I found this about 98% completed in my Gdocs, so I figured, ah, what the hell.
> 
> Please ignore the slight artistic license taken with emergency room medicine.

**0.**

A surgeon's hands are the same as a sniper's. Steady, precise, practiced. Perfectly still under pressure. Capable of ending a life, capable of saving one. 

John Watson's hands end two hundred lives in Afghanistan, and Sebastian Moran's hands save John Watson. If there is a spark of recognition there in that operating theatre, if there is the slightest hint that this is not how things should be ‑‑ well, neither of them would know, would they?

**1a.**

John Watson returns to London healthy and whole, at least in body. In spirit, he's just as lost as anyone else. He is, for the most part, unemployable: one look at his resume and employers say _thank you for your time, but we simply can't_ ‑‑ and John smiles, all teeth, and walks away.

No one hires an ex‑sniper. Had John finished university, he might have a degree, something to show for himself besides shrapnel scars, a fading tan, an alcoholic sister. But in London no one finds _can fire and maintain nine different types of firearm_ a marketable skill; no one reads _can put a bullet through a target's skull at one‑thousand metres_ and thinks, _this is the kind of man I want working in my office._

So John Watson sits alone in his empty, grey flat, squandering his meager pension away. At first he drinks, just to have something to do; when that loses its appeal, he starts gambling, and that one sticks. He wins and loses and goes home at night empty‑handed to dream of the battlefield, illegal pistol tucked under his pillow like a comfort.

**1b.**

Sebastian Moran returns to London with a scar on his shoulder the size of his outstretched hand. He limps slightly when it rains.

**2a.**

This is how John Watson meets James Moriarty:

He has wagered everything he has on a losing hand. Poker isn't his game, but he hasn't the patience for blackjack ‑‑ he wants the risk. Needs the danger of all or nothing. So John holds a nine‑seven in his hand and wagers his neck ‑‑ wagers his life ‑‑ and though most of the players fold, one man not only calls his bluff but raises.

The world has never seemed as bright and as colorful as it does now, even under a single swaying lightbulb coated with dust.

**2b.**

This is how Sebastian Moran meets Sherlock Holmes:

He is thirty minutes from the end of his shift in A&E when they wheel in a mostly‑dead junkie. It's not the most dire case Sebastian has ever worked, but it's close: the junkie codes three times, and by the time he's stable Sebastian has a splitting migraine and a sore throat from barking out orders.

When he finally leaves the hospital, two hours past the end of his shift, there's a black car waiting outside and a driver who knows his name, and when the car drops him off at 221B Baker Street he wonders how they even knew he was looking for a new flat in the first place.

**3a.**

John and Jim get along like a house on fire, like they were made for each other. Jim's sing‑song voice, Jim's wide, dark eyes: they unlock the dark things inside John's soul he has tried, time after time, to keep buried. John already knows how to kill but Jim re‑teaches him anyway, instructs him which marks to leave behind, the best way to dispose of a body, the best way to display one. 

Jim is a perpetual surprise, a constant shuffling of qualities behind an innocent face. When Jim leans over a fresh corpse in Milan ‑‑ a corpse John put there not ten minutes ago ‑‑ and kisses John, he expects it to be harsh and rough, but in reality it's anything but. Jim likes kissing: likes it even more than sex itself, it seems, more than the slow slide of bodies that John grows to associate with each kill. 

John has never been good at separating his work from his personal life, but with Jim he finds they're exactly the same thing.

**3b.**

Sebastian and Sherlock argue almost every waking minute. They are both comprised of sharp, hard edges: they simply rebound at angles and strike again. It is almost impossible for them to live with each other. Sherlock is a wholly inconsiderate flatmate, leaving experiments strewn about the living room, wasting Sebastian's medical supplies, playing discordant notes on the violin at all hours of the day and night. Out of the flat he is insufferable, too, dragging Sebastian along to crime scenes and treating him like a helper, not as a friend or a colleague.

It drives Sebastian absolutely mad. He refuses to be just a helper: he wants to be an equal. Someone Sherlock takes to crime scenes as a partner, not just as an audience. Sherlock thinks an army doctor should be conditioned to taking orders; Sebastian knows from experience it's the exact opposite. In the army, you listen to the man who knows how to save a life, because one day he will be the man saving yours. 

They wrestle and clash in all ways metaphorical and literal; the tension builds and builds. They are tussling on the floor of 221B one day, Sebastian's oyster card held aloft in Sherlock's hand, when Sebastian pins Sherlock down with his weight and doesn't let up: the afternoon ends in blood and sweat and skin and Sebastian thinks idly, afterwards, that anything so violent really shouldn't be so enjoyable.

**4a.**

Jim says, "I have a game I want to play."

Jim explains it all: the setup, the movement of each chess piece around the board, the sacrifice, the checkmate. It's an elegant plan, but John would like it more if Jim's eyes didn't light up in a way he's never seen before, as if the mere _idea_ of Sherlock Holmes is the most thrilling ecstasy possible. Jim had even started to spend the occasional night in John's bed; now he's back to not sleeping at all. 

Sometimes it's almost like John doesn't exist any more. He feels the resentment rise up in him sometimes, but then Jim will break off in the middle of detailing the current step in his plan to flash that sharp, incredible grin, the one that says, _I see you, John, and I_ need _you,_ and John will grin back and keep listening.

It's a brilliant plan. 

Four years after Afghanistan, John plants a pair of trainers in a moldy basement flat, and waits for Sherlock Holmes to find them.

**4b.**

Sherlock says, "Someone's playing a game."

Sherlock seems unduly excited by the idea. Seems far too fond of the prospect of playing games with people's lives, of faked gas explosions, of property damage and grievous bodily injury. He holds the pink phone like a talisman, the magical key to unlock the greatest mystery that could ever hold his terrific intellect. 

And people die, because that's what people _do._

And four years after Afghanistan, Sebastian wakes up strapped to a semtex vest.

**5.**

Here, then, is where it all converges: the pool, where little Carl died.

**6a.**

John has his rifle trained on Sherlock Holmes's forehead ‑‑ no laser sight, the others are simply for distraction, simply to unnerve ‑‑ and his finger on the trigger, ready to fire. Jim gave him orders to stay: Jim doesn't want the game to end. It's stupid of him to think he and Holmes can do this infinitely; at least Holmes seems to realize this. A Sig appears in his hand and he takes aim at Jim, brandishing it like an extension of his own body. 

Even if Jim is stupid enough to risk his own life (not stupid, no, never stupid, but rash, unthinking, overly brave), John's not stupid enough to risk Jim's. 

Jim steps forward, and as John's finger wraps around the trigger he thinks briefly that Holmes is surprisingly beautiful, all straight spine and cool eyes. It's a shame he never got to know the chessmaster sitting on the other side of the board, the man who held Jim's attention and obsession for weeks on end. There must be something special about him, something amazing about this self‑professed heartless man. It's a shame to put a bullet through Sherlock Holmes's brain. But needs must, and all.

**6b.**

Sebastian breathes in the scent of chlorine, chest heavy under the weight of the vest.

Moriarty has taken over, finally speaking with his own voice. It's a terrifying voice, soft one second and serrated the next: something in it hooks into his chest, digging deep in a way no one else's ever has, not even Sherlock's.

Sebastian will be the first to admit he admires the man. Plotting everything out so intricately, leading Sherlock straight into this trap ‑‑ it's played out almost perfectly. And the dénouement is clear to him, as well: the leveling of a city block, the death of Sebastian Moran, the fall of Sherlock Holmes from grace ‑‑ or wherever it is he's so precariously perched. 

Sebastian watches Moriarty shuffle forward in his designer suit and thinks about how much stronger he surely is than this middling criminal mastermind, how he could break him in half without breaking a sweat. It's not out of any loyalty to his flatmate that he finds himself reaching for Moriarty, but rather a need to stop him, to ask him and see, to find out if he's something to whom it's worth pledging allegiance.

**7.**

A surgeon's hands are the same as a sniper's. Steady, precise, practiced. Perfectly still under pressure. Capable of ending a life, capable of saving one. 

John's finger shakes on the trigger and he doesn't fire, doesn't take the hit; Sebastian's hands wrap around Jim's upper arm and they topple, sideways, into the pool. 

This is what happens after:

A sniper named John Watson makes his way down from the scaffolding, a tremble in his left hand, to stand before a consulting detective named Sherlock Holmes. They eye each other carefully but there are no bullets exchanged, no hard feelings, and later that night they go out for dinner at a small Italian restaurant where John accepts Sherlock's offer to move in.

A doctor named Sebastian Moran kicks his way up from the deep end of the pool and flings himself up on the tiles beside a criminal mastermind named Jim Moriarty. They lie there for several minutes, panting for breath, and then Sebastian twists Jim's arm until it pops and Jim just smiles, knowing.

**8.**

And here, then, is where it all really begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Main fic account: [@introductory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/introductory).


End file.
